How Metrics can Influence a Sense of Self on Social Media
The digital age has swept over postmodern society like a tidal wave, bringing with it a pool of new jobs and opportunities for businesses, creatives and recreational internet users alike. People have begun to notice that multi-useful social platforms like Facebook and the less activity-diverse Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter have economic potential. Over the most recent years, this potential has been leveraged by particularly popular social media users who we call “influencers”.
Influencers use social media to post lifestyle content that appeals to their unique group of followers and they make their money through posting sponsored content and images that fit their vibe. YouTube influencers make additional revenue from the ads that run before, during and after their videos. Attending sponsored events, selling merchandise, and creating commissioned content are just some of the many ways that influencers can make their money. Seems AMAZING right!! Seems easy, RIGHT!!!?!
Well…
Though it is quite amazing the ways social media platforms have become economically useful, the only way the influencer lifestyle becomes possible is when one gains a large enough following to become useful to potential sponsors and that isn’t always easy.
Once a person has started to build a fanbase on their platform of choice, they may begin to use the site’s business features. One particularly important feature influencers have access too are metrics. These tell them important facts about their audience and their individual preferences while also displaying the growth (or decline) of their personal brand. Though it is important to regulate your engagement with your audience, the metrics that share the popularity of your profile give you little actionable information; it simply tells you how frequently your content is viewed/how much more or less this is from last week. These “vanity metrics” may make you feel good, but emphasizing their merit when determining what content to post may actually prove detrimental to your brand. One extremely well known example of what can happen when vanity metrics are over valued can be seen in the case of Logan Paul.
As you’ve likely already heard (I mean, who HASN’T??), in December of 2017, popular social media personality Logan Paul posted a video that showed the image of a deceased man who had committed suicide while touring the Aokigahara forest in Japan, a spot that is infamous for these tragic events. This man’s image was featured in the video’s thumbnail which was entitled “We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest…”.
It seems to me that Paul was using this man’s death as “clickbait”. The clickbait phenomenon is when a creator posts images and/or phrases that entice viewers to engage with their content because they appeal to them in an outrageous way, thus encouraging their “clicks”. I can see this as being directly related to Paul’s valuation of vanity metrics. The more people view his content, the more likely his content will be promoted based on popularity which increases the possibility of it reaching a larger audience and therefore increases his potential for profit and brand growth. Paul’s desperation for views led to his neglect for basic respect. His consideration of that man’s loved ones and life experiences came second to knowing a large audience would be intrigued by the images he advertised (meaning lots ad views which = $$$$).
Another example of the ways vanity metrics can negatively affect influencers can be seen in the story of Alexis Ren.
Rising to fame during her relationship with Instagram model Jay Alvarrez, Ren spent much of her early career touring the world and promoting the exotic destinations she travelled to through couple posts people would describe as “goals”.
What she hadn’t shared with her fan base during this time was that she was suffering from an eating disorder. Using Instagram to begin a modelling career, she was represented by an agency who told her after a vacation getaway that she needed to “lose weight” to evoke her former Instagram persona. This request coupled with the increasing pressure from fans to present a certain look online resulted in the development of obsessive insecurities that turned into a form of anorexia. Her posts were motivated by a wish to achieve a large amount of likes and her over valuation of these likes caused her to neglect her own well-being. Her growing popularity took precedence over her health. Her story is similar to that of another former Instagram model Essena O’Neill, who attributes her stress to Instagram’s algorithm/metric-based business platform, which caused her so much anguish she actually quit social media all together.
Now I’m not trying to say that social media is completely detrimental; There are many success stories attributed to people who are happily pursuing careers on these platforms. But I do believe that the numbers these platforms provide to measure one’s success should be viewed as they are, which are numbers. Vanity metrics, though important to determining brand value, are not the most important element of your brand. The most valuable information lies in the audience analytics which give you an idea of who your target audience should be and what they look for in your content. When influencers give prominence to the metrics that relate to clicks and likes, they can let their popularity make them feel invincible when their content can actually be promoting the wrong things. In Logan Paul’s case, his valuation of views clouded his moral judgement while Alexis Ren’s growing popularity distracted her from her own self-care. To help prevent these negative outcomes, influencers should inform themselves of the actionable benefits of each metric and let this information guide their content-making decisions.
But are influencers the only one’s to blame in this equation? Do platforms like YouTube, which are driven by ad-revenue which is earned through content views, PROMOTE the use of potentially immoral clickbait? Do Instagram’s metrics relate too much to popularity over actual content? With the growing prominence of new media platforms, these questions should be considered to ensure the growing online community develops in a way that benefits society. We need to encourage people to develop a wholesome sense of self online; one that promotes their own well-being as well as that of others.
